Friday, June 1, 2012

There is a myth taught by countless survival manuals and well
meaning educators that it only takes a few hours of hunting and gathering each
day to find and prepare enough food for long term survival. Except in maybe a
few ideal locations around the planet this couldn't be farther from the truth,
especially for the vast majorityof
people that are, at best, weekend survivalists. Finding enough food
, animals and plants, to provide one's daily nutritional requirements for long-term
subsistence is vastly underestimated by most people. By nutritional
requirements I mean having enough food that one is not in a constant state of
losing body mass and slowly starving.

Just to put this into some kind of perspective that can be
more easily grasped, consider this: around
3000 calories per day are required to maintain one's health and weight. A
common red squirrel weighs 5to 9 ounces
and dressed out, ready to eat, gives you about 3 ounces of food. This means
you'd need to eat about 25 squirrels per day to meet your caloric requirements.
That's a lot of squirrels folks. Even if you managed to catch larger animals,
say rabbits, turtles, snakes etc., one a day is not going to hack it. For short
term survival this will keep you going
much longer of course but for several months of living off the land you are
going to have to step it up by several notches.

There's an essay in Samuel Thayer's book "Nature's
Garden" that goes into details about what one needs for long term survival
and I consider it to be the best information that I've ever read on the
subject. Even if you aren't all that much interested in edible plants (maybe
you should be) that section of the book alone is worth the price. That article
also gives the definitive explanation of why Chris McCandless died ("Into
the Wild" book and movie) and completely debunks the theory that his death
was due to eating poisonous plants. (
actually this was done by several researchers but most people still tend to
believe the Hollywood version) )

The gist of it is simple. Just like Chris McCandless , most
people underestimate how much knowledge - and food- that it takes to survive long-term living off the
land and also overestimate their own skills and knowledge. If you are going to
live off the land in a long-term subsistence situation, food must be a major
priority. How skilled you are at getting that food will determine your success.